The soap opera writers' discussion

[Vee]

That's bizarre. Could Eli have been Pam Long? I doubt it.

[EricMontreal22]

Great choices, especially nice to see the Brits (I agree with your picks) and even some I wouldn't list like Sesentsen and Brown whose Loving and The City (after a very rough first six months) I particularly enjoyed.  I guess I can see someone listing Reilly who I wouldn't but....  James Lipton?  The ultimate hack?  Has he EVER written decent soap opera (or plays or musicals--all flops) for that matter? 

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And I'll say it again, while maybe he only had one great stint, I'm shocked no one has mentioned Michael Malone at all.

Found the quote: 

PJ asks: Right after you left OLTL, Eli, the HIV-positive teenager Carlotta Vega adopted, vanished without a trace. If you had stayed, what story did you have planned for him?
Claire Labine: I don’t remember Eli.  I don’t think he was my invention, he was probably Jill's [Farren Phelps].  I wouldn’t have done another HIV story, I had done that with Stone [on GENERAL HOSPITAL].  I wouldn’t have touched another HIV story for a long time.  I felt we had given that our all and I wouldn’t have gone back to that. 

 

Here's the link to her full interview--well worth reading when someone has the time--it and the Wisner Washam interview on the same site are essential (well essential to me ). 
https://www.welovesoaps.net/2010/02/claire-labine-answered-your-questions.html

 

[Vee]

Jarrod has departed because we were all too critical of bad soaps.

[EricMontreal22]

Well since he LOVES James Lipton....  maybe that's for the best.

[EricMontreal22]

Rita Lakin wrote Peyton Place: The Next Generation, a TV Movie that was a planned pilot for an 80s prime time soap update of PP. 

 

[cct]

Eric, it is so good to "see" you again. You always bring a sincere thoughtfulness to the boards.

[Soaplovers]

 

How were the notes from Nixon and Cenedella different, did they say?  Nixon was very detail oriented and I assume back in the day, she had to fight as hard to get anywhere as Irna had to.

 

I dont know why Depriest had shorter term stints (except for Days where she was conned wrote for 2.5 yeaes..or Another world 1.0 where she lasted almost 2 years).   But I am loving her take on The Doctors and am sad it is close to an end since the story is at a pivotal point...but she will he leaving the show in a fairly good hands for Marland to take over.

 

Speaking of which...Marland is always created with being this genius..but he's over rated.  The only show I can see where he worked any sort of magic would be GH (that show needed help)...but when he took over GL..it was in great shape...and when he took over ATWT..it had already been repaired by Bledsoe Horgan...and he didnt do much to tweak what she had put in place except for those horrid Snyders (and now we know he didnt create the Dancys on the Doctors...but seeing that family, you could see how they would inspire him...but early Dancy's were more likable than the Snyders..imho).

[EricMontreal22]

Thank you!  I'm glad to see you are still here

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[EricMontreal22]

She only sent me one of the Another World scripts as I wasn't too interested in it or Somerset, but basically Canedella's notes were just VERY sparse and didn't feel too "involved".  I will say that she seemed to love working with him almost as much as Nixon...  Nixon's on the other hand, as I said, were just all over the place--but by no means mostly corrections.  Lots of comments about what she liked (on one page she makes a note "And here is where people across America will start to cry!"

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), they just seem really involved as if she was picturing the drama while reading the script and trying to see if it fit her vision--if that makes sense.  They're not here at school with me but I've been meaning to scan at least a few pages as they're really fascinating (the three AMC ones don't really involve any big storyline though the OLTL ones are during the Marcy (Francesca James) gaslighting Vicki story.)

I think DePriest can be a cold writer--I take that away from every era of her writing I've seen but she certainly made AMC a much colder feeling show in her brief time--she also really pulled it into focus (the final year of Broderick's run that time sorta became a muddle IMHO) and emphasized dramatic moments.  It's purely conjecture on my part but I just assumed that maybe she didn't often do SUCH short runs (under a year) due to being hired then fired but rather agreed to them -- as at least in the case of The Doctors, AMC and OLTL she seemed to be called in when they felt the show needed sharpening up and more drive.

I'm with you on the Cult of Marland.  I admit, I might feel differently if I had watched his ATWT or his GL as it aired.  And of course, to be perfectly clear, I do think he's a very strong writer.  But from what I've seen comments like "he could do every genre and type of story" don't ring true...

[BetterForgotten]

I think Patrick Mulcahey's commentary about Nixon's feedback on his LOV scripts was that she was a severe micro-manager and her feedback ultimately wasn't helpful to him.  

 

Found it, it's from a Santa Barbara fan site:

 

http://santabarbara-online.com/InterviewPMulcahey2.htm

 

How did you start in Santa Barbara ?

 

Thereby hangs a tale. After working with Douglas Marland on Guiding Light and then on Loving, which I hated (and where Agnes Nixon was like some psychotic schoolmarm on speed, making copious condescending red-pen "corrections" in the margins of scripts - "You used the same word on page 2 and on page 34 ! Too repetitive !") - after that, I decided I was done with writing for soaps. Douglas was the best. He'd taught me more about writing than any ten literature professors ever could have, plus I'd won an Emmy. I figured I'd never have another experience like that, so I decided go back to what I knew best : waiting on tables and writing plays at night and being a starving artist again.

[EricMontreal22]

Thanks for posting that.  This is my bias, but from all the interviews with Mulcahey I've read--he likes to come off as rather irreverent so I assume he's exaggerating (at least I hope so

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).  I guess my take away from that is not a very popular one--I think Nixon has every right to, well, micromanage her show (though I'm a little surprised at how involved, day to day, she was during the time Marland was writing--I can sure imagine this was a big reason why he left after a year).  I completely get why for many that would be a horrible way to work, but...

From my interviews I know that during the 95-97 Broderick era Nixon remained very hands on even if she took no official credit (though if I recall she did go up with the writers when they won the Emmy)--in that she offered her feed back on every script (apparently sometimes would even phone up one of the main writers late at night with a story thought), even though she wasn't credited *however* they have also said that--by that point (and Loving ten years earlier may have been different) she was also respectful enough that she knew that they didn't *need* to take her input and put it to use by any means.

It's funny with Nixon and AMC in that I think fans tend to (myself included) both overplay her involvement and underplay it.  As has been mentioned, a lot more credit--especially for the early 80s greatness--deserves to go to Wisner, but other writers as well, for creating fave stories and characters.  On the other hand, by all reports, she was overseeing things (I suspect even, though to a lesser extent especially with her prolonged grief at the death of her husband, during the awful second McTavish run) and while her power greatly diminished, she seems to have been overseeing the show to *some* degree during some of its worse times (for me the solo run of Passanante after Nixon stopped writing with her officially being the nadir--others will prob pick a McTavish run)--the only time that she wasn't allowed to offer story input and advice being during the Pratt era. 

Again from her confusing memoirs it does seem that officially she was co-HW of OLTL with Gordon Russell from 73 (when she left the HW position) to 75 which is when she started to feel too occupied with AMC and "comfortable" leaving it with Russell, but she also claims to have consulted at least through the end of the 70s (I know that during the 80s and I think even early 90s she did hold an official post at ABC as consultant for all of their daytime shows but that could mean anything). 

Edited September 22, 2018 by EricMontreal22

[BetterForgotten]

Mulcahey seems very no nonsense. Nixon's working style just rubbed him the wrong way.

 

He's spoken very highly of Marland, the Dobson's, Nancy Curlee, and even Bob Guza - perhaps they gave him a greater level of freedom to express his creativity. 

[Khan]

If I've said it once, I've said it a million times: it's truly a shame that Patrick Mulcahey never worked for AMC.  I think he would have done some amazing work for that show, but I guess no one at ABC ever thought to see whether he were interested.

[BetterForgotten]

They were obviously not going to work on a soap after their ordeal with their own one, but the Dobson's would have been interesting at AMC as well. I think they would have gelled well with Agnes's sometimes broad humour approach and they showed at GL they could also handle more contemporary issues. Their ATWT had issues, but a huge part of that seemed P&G wanting to follow the trends GH/ABC was successful with at that time. 

[Vee]

To be clear: I'd kill to see those scripts with Agnes' notes.